


everlasting

by lilaliacs



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Immortality, M/M, Mentions of Death, Tuck Everlasting AU, but also just teenagers, lots of pretty forest imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 05:58:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15430491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilaliacs/pseuds/lilaliacs
Summary: “Did you tell him?”“No.” Donghyuck hurries to say, shaking his head. Then he hesitates and turns his eyes to the ceiling, obviously in thought. “At least not explicitly.”“What didn’t you tell me explicitly?” Mark asks. He kind of feels like this is not how the typical visit at a new friend’s house goes, but what does he know? He doesn’t have many references, and Donghyuck seems rather relaxed, so he can be too, he guesses.Donghyuck opens his mouth, but he’s cut off. “Nothing. He told younothing.” Taeyong says. “And he’s not going to.” He adds then, pointing an accusing finger at his brother.





	everlasting

**Author's Note:**

> this is based on the musical tuck everlasting. i used to be obsessed with it when it was on broadway last year.
> 
> i changed some things about the plot because i was either too lazy or just dodn't like them
> 
> enjoy <3

Mark remembers that back in elementary school, he used to still be excited for Summer. The thrill when school was finally out and he got to run around with his friends and explore his old neighbourhood and eat all the popsicles he could stomach- what kid wouldn’t enjoy that? 

But now, he is eighteen years old, and he finds himself dreading the last day of school. 

“You’re seriously the only person I know whose mood gets worse the closer to the end of school it gets.” Jaemin tells him, on the last day before break. 

They’re not doing anything in class anymore, only biding their time and waiting for the bell to ring and release them into their well-deserved summer break. The last one in their school careers too, as their homeroom teacher so kindly reminded them. Once they’ll be back after summer they’ll all be seniors and hanging by a thread to pass their finals. 

Yet somehow, Mark is already looking forward to being back. 

“You know exactly why.” He grumbles in Jaemin’s direction. His head is buried in his arms on the desk, so it comes out muffled. 

“Oh, c’mon, don’t be like that. We’ll still hang out.” Renjun on his other side chips in. “It’s not like you can get rid of us.”

“Yeah.” Jaemin nods enthusiastically. “I would totally move in with you over the summer, dude. You have a _pool_ ” 

Mark lifts his head and sends him a grimace. “My parents would have my head.” 

Jaemin knows that. He also knows that Mark’s parents would probably never even find out if Jaemin moved in with him for the Summer. It’s not hard to hide things from them when they’re never home. But Jaemin also knows to not bring that fact up. 

It’s the main reason why Mark came to hate Summer. Back in kindergarten , his parents packed up him and Johnny, moving them halfway across the world, because of business reasons, parked their sons in their new mansion on the outskirts of town, secluded from all other neighbourhoods, with their own private wood even, and went on to spend more time on business trips then in their new home. 

The house was huge, way too big for two boys to live in without their parents, and even though Johnny had really tried his best to make it a home for Mark, he had developed a strong dislike of spending time there. It’s quite unfortunate, seeing as he has to live there, but at least during the school year he can spend his days with his friends. 

His parents don’t like people ‘lounging around’ the house during the holidays. Mark has tried to explain to them that he is also just ‘lounging around’ when they aren’t there, and that it really doesn’t make a difference whether there are two people more or less, but they had none of it. Mark is looking forward to weeks of boredom, as the final bell rings. 

“Hey there.” Johnny greets him as Mark walks into their kitchen. Ten throws up a hand in greeting, his eyes trained on the sandwich-maker in front of him. 

Ten is the only other person his parents will accept in the house for longer than an afternoon, and that’s only because his mother is their housekeeper and they live next door anyways. It’s the only other house close by, and Mark’s parents probably think they’re upholding some kind of neighbour-etiquette. The fact that Johnny had fallen head over heels in love with the boy from next door is merely a blip on their radar. Mark isn’t sure they’re actually aware that Johnny is gay. 

“Ready for your super cool and exciting last Summer before senior year?” Johnny asks when Mark has discarded his schoolbag in a corner and sat down at the kitchen island next to Ten. He doesn’t miss the sarcasm in his brother’s voice. 

“Absolutely.” He deadpans. “It’s gonna be a thrill.”

“That’s the spirit!” Ten nudges him. “You can still hang out with us anytime, you know that.” 

Mark knows, Ten and Johnny have told him time and time again, but he’d really rather not hang around his older brother and his boyfriend all Summer, no matter how much he likes them. It’s bound to become awkward. 

“Or you can just spend the entire Summer wallowing in teen angst either up in your room or out in the forest.” 

“That’s a great idea actually, I hadn’t thought of that yet!” Mark throws back into Johnny’s grinning face, voice dripping with sarcasm. 

It’s exactly how Mark has spent his last few Summers. 

The forest surrounding their house is the only thing Mark actually likes about it. He asked his father about it once, why they even have a forest when they have no use for it, and his father shrugged and explained that he was offered to buy the piece of land along with the house for far less than it was worth and it just seemed like a good investment. 

Mark can’t care less about his father’s investments, but he cares for the forest and how it became some kind of a comfort for him. There is a meadow, about twenty minutes away from their house, and Mark likes to go there in the evening to look up at the stars, listen to some music and forget about whatever is going wrong with his life at the moment. 

Last week, he passed the meadow, walked farther into the forest than he normally would, and found a small stream right before he had to turn around to make it home in time for dinner. It had been a rare weekend were both of their parents had been home, and Mark knew that if he didn’t see them off that night, for their trip to China for most of Summer, he would never hear the end of it. 

Maybe he’ll dedicate the next few weeks to following that little stream, see where it feeds into the bigger river that passes through town, look for its spring. It’ll probably be exciting enough, for the first two weeks, and afterwards he will have to find something else, but it’s a start. 

***

It’s a few days before he thinks about the stream again. Renjun, Jaemin, Johnny, Ten and him dedicate the first weekend of the break to a Marvel marathon in their living room, and Mark actually forgets for a second that they can’t just spend the next few weeks like this. 

He remembers quite fast though, when his mother calls him on Monday morning, sternly reminding him about her anti-lounging rules, all while emphasising how much she likes Jaemin and Renjun, how they are very sweet boys, but she still doesn’t want them hanging around the house too much. “Their parents surely want to spend time with them too.” She laughs and it takes his all for Mark not to audibly groan. 

It’s ridiculous how his mother expects other parents to do the things she can’t be bothered to, but he supposes it makes sense in her Parenting 101 idea of family. 

On Tuesday, he helps Ten and Johnny with cleaning the pool, even though Ten’s mother tells them multiple times that their parents hired people specifically for that job. Granted, they are too occupied with throwing each other into the water over and over again to actually get any work done, so maybe it’s not the worst thing when the pool-cleaning crew shows up on Wednesday. 

On Thursday, Mark spends all day in bed, reading and catching up with some series, and in the evening his main objective is to avoid the living room because he can hear Johnny and Ten getting drunk and if they as much as catch a glimpse of him, they’ll rope him into their shenanigans and it’ll probably end in the pool-cleaning crew having to return way sooner than planned. 

On Friday morning he decides to be a good brother and works away in the kitchen to make hangover breakfast for the other two. They trudge into the dining room soon after, their eyes bleary, complaining about their headaches, but perk up when Mark shoves Aspirin and pancakes into their hands. 

As they sit outside on the patio, Johnny turns to him, grinning. “We’re going on a roadtrip.”

“What?” Mark furrows his brows. 

“Me and Ten are going on a roadtrip.” Johnny repeats.

“Only for five days, and not far away.” Ten chips in. “But we saw this documentary last night about this super cool, super special zoo, and we absolutely _have_ to see those meerkats.” 

“I’m pretty sure any zoo closer to us also has meerkats.” Mark weighs in, but Ten shakes his head. 

“Not super cool, super special meerkats.” 

Mark thinks about reasoning with Ten that all meerkats are super cool and super special, but he decides against it. Instead he turns to Johnny. 

“Mom and dad won’t like that.” 

“Which is where you come in.” Johnny grins and points his fork Mark’s way. “You’re gonna cover for us.”

“For the record, I wanted to take you with us.” Ten assures him. 

“Thanks.” Mark nods, even though he knows just as well as Ten probably does, that he would have declined the offer. He can think of a million better ways to spend his days than being locked into a small car while Ten and Johnny are making out. 

Lying to his parents about their eldest son’s whereabouts is not something that would have pegged Mark as better than that at first, but he supposes that he doesn’t have much of a choice. 

“What do you want me to tell them?” He asks, rolling his eyes when Johnny erupts into a small cheer. 

“Depending on how often they ask, just say I’m busy when they wanna talk to me, or that I’m at Ten’s place helping his mom with something.” 

“They love my mom.” Ten adds, as if Mark doesn’t know that. 

Mark shrugs, stabbing his pancake with a fork. “Sounds pretty bulletproof.” He says, and the other two grin at him. 

***

It is pretty bulletproof. Ten and Johnny left the day before, and so far Mark has only talked to his mother on the phone once but lying to her is even easier than he anticipated, and it doesn’t seem like she is particularly worried about her sons breaking the rules she set for them. 

The plan is working, but it is also proving to have downsides. 

With Ten and Johnny around, Mark could at least pretend to have something to do all day, by simply tagging along with whatever the two of them were doing if he felt like it. Now, the house is empty, and Mark feels like every step he takes in it echoes way too loud, and he also feels like he’s never been this bored in his entire life. 

To top it off, Renjun and Jaemin are both roped into family trips, Jaemin spending the week with his grandparents a good three hours away and Renjun having to babysit his little cousins at a family reunion across town for just as long. 

It’s how Mark finds himself shouldering a haphazardly packed backpack on Sunday, in it only the bare necessities (a portable battery, the book he’s reading right now, a bottle of cola and a bag of chips) and taking off into the woods. 

When he reaches the meadow, he briefly considers just staying there, but he remembers the stream, and decides that he might as well start with his plan now. 

It’s quite peaceful, he finds, to just follow the stream upwards, listen to its soft noises and the birds overhead. It’s definitely way nicer than listening to his own footsteps resounding on his room’s floor. Somehow, with the forest around him and the stream by his side, he feels less alone. 

In fact, after about an hour of wandering, he doesn’t feel alone at all. It’s nearly as if someone’s with him, a vague but definitely existent presence next to him, not exactly the feeling of someone watching him, but that of peaceful camaraderie, as if he can reach out a hand, call out and someone will answer--

“So how long are you planning to walk for?” 

Mark nearly stumbles into the stream, braces himself for the impact and for his skull to crack open, if his heart jumping out of his chest hasn’t already killed him by then, but none of it happens. 

A hand wraps around his wrist and yanks him a few steps away from the water. “Woah, careful there. Sorry, I probably should’ve started with a warning that I was there or something.” 

Mark finds himself looking down at a boy, roughly his age, grinning at him sheepishly. 

“Hi.” The boy says, “I’m here. Even though I don’t know how you didn’t notice me, I’ve been walking behind you for, like, ten minutes now. You must have been really caught up in your own head. I’m Donghyuck, by the way.” 

“I’m Mark.” He gives back, still kind of dazed as his heartbeat calms down. 

“Okay, cool.” Donghyuck lets go of his wrist and steps back a bit, to aimlessly kick at a pebble on the ground. “What are you doing here, Mark?” 

“I’m following this stream.” Mark starts to explain, when he realizes something. “Wait, what are _you_ doing here?” 

Donghyuck looks up at him and raises an eyebrow. “I was also following the stream, I guess. Well I was actually following you, but semantics.” 

“You came here to follow me?” Mark asks incredulously and Donghyuck laughs. 

“Oh, don’t flatter yourself. I just saw you and thought I’d see what you’re up to.” 

“So why are you in this forest?” 

“I’m visiting family.” 

Mark knits his eyebrows together. “Family?” 

The only families he knows to live in close proximity are his own and Ten’s and he’s definitely not related to Donghyuck, and he has met all of Ten’s family two years ago at his mother's birthday. He’s very sure he would have remembered if he’d seen Donghyuck there. 

“Yeah, they live back there on the outskirts of the forest.” Donghyuck points in the opposite direction of where Mark came from. “About half an hour from here.” 

“So you’re just passing through here?”

“Yeah, there’s a road that leads there, but I always liked to take the route through the forest more.” Dongyhuck smiles. “It’s pretty here.”

“It is, yeah.” Mark starts, nodding slowly and trying to think of a way to breach this topic without sounding rude. “Uh, listen, dude, the thing is that you can’t really... be here?” Is what he settles on. 

Eloquent, as ever. 

“Why’s that?” Donghyuck asks. 

“It’s a private forest. It belongs to my family.” Mark explains, and cringes at the way that sounds. He doesn’t want to be _that_ rich kid who kicks people out of his forest. 

“Oh, really? I didn’t know that, since when? I haven’t been around for a while, I probably just missed it.” 

Donghyuck doesn’t seem affronted in any way, and it eases Mark’s nerves a bit. “Nearly fifteen years, actually.” Mark chuckles. He doubts that it has been more than fifteen years since Donghyuck has wandered through this forest by himself, the boy looks barely older than 17. 

Instead of joining Mark in laughing or saying what Mark expects him to say, like, _‘Oh well, I really just didn’t know then, sorry man’_ , Donghyuck nods, looking thoughtful. “Yeah, that sounds about right.” 

“What do you mean?” Mark asks. It isn’t impossible. Maybe he took this shortcut with his parents last when he was very small, and then they moved away, and now he is back--

“I think it’s been about 16 years since I was here last.” Donghyuck replies. 

“With your parents.” Mark gives back, and it’s more of an obvious addition to what Donghyuck said than a question, so it throws him off for more reasons than one, when Donghyuck shakes his head. 

“I was on my own that time. I think Jeno was already there or something, I don’t really remember though. But yeah, I was alone. I’m actually on the way to see Jeno right now!” 

“Oh...okay.” Mark says slowly. He wonders what kind of parents would let a 2 year old wander around random woods on his own, wonders if 2 year olds can actually walk or not, and he wonders where Donghyuck even came from to visit his parents back then, but Donghyuck apparently deems the conversation to be over. 

He kicks another pebble, and chirps: “So why were you following the stream, exactly? Also, do you have any food in that backpack, I forgot to bring some and I think I’m starving.” 

And that’s how Mark ends up sharing his bag of chips with a stranger he found trespassing into his wood, while they pick up to follow the stream again. 

For the fact that Donghyuck is a stranger, it’s surprisingly easy to talk to him. He has a weird sort of humour, on one hand very similar to what Mark would expect from Jaemin, a very clever sort of sarcasm, on the other it’s a very naive bluntness. 

“Your headphones don’t have a chord.” Donghyuck notes at one point and Mark nods. 

“That’s wild, I remember when they invented headphones, it was literally _the_ coolest and weirdest thing ever, and now they just make them without a chord and everyone is just like ‘Eh, yeah, that’s alright I guess.’” 

Mark snorts. “You _remember_ when they invented them?” 

And instead of laughing and correcting himself or rolling his eyes and explaining the joke to Mark, Donghyuck nods, like the question is unnecessary and goes on to talk about something else. 

Mark tells him about Johnny and Ten and their trip to the zoo some time later, and Donghyuck smiles. 

“I haven’t been to a zoo in at least ten years!” He tells Mark, and then goes on to list all the zoos he’s been to before that. It’s unbelievably many. Mark thinks that his parents must have really liked going to the zoo, if they took their kids to so many of them in the first seven years of Donghyuck’s life. 

He tells Mark stories about his brothers, Jeno and Taeyong, who he’s planning to meet at some point today, and who have done an awful lot of things, Mark thinks. 

Mark tells him stories about Johnny too, but they’re not nearly as many and not nearly as special as Donghyuck’s family anecdotes. 

Donghyuck still laughs about each of them and makes ominous comments like “Oh man, I didn’t know people actually still used fart pillows these days.” or “How does your brother like bananas? Because he probably wouldn’t have eaten as many Twinkies before World War II if he doesn’t like them, they changed the flavour back then and never bothered to change it back.” or, following up on that, a whole rant about the changing variety of bananas after World War II. 

Mark doesn’t actually know how long they walked for when he suggests taking a short break by a river bank. It could have been 2 hours or 20 minutes, all he’s sure of is that he knows more about bananas now than he’s ever planned to, and that he can’t quite say he’s bothered by that. 

It’s nice, listening to Donghyuck talk. He has this way of making Mark feel like he’s part of whatever he’s saying, like Mark has been there for the exact day people ate their last banana flavoured Twinkies. In a way, it sounds like Donghyuck was there, and that’s just really fascinating to Mark. 

Right now, they’re sitting in silence, the only noise the stream and the birds. Mark takes a sip from his Coca Cola and offers the bottle to Donghyuck, but he shakes his head. 

“I can’t drink that anymore after they changed the formula.” He explains, with a little scrunch of his nose. 

“And when was that?” Mark grins. 

“1985. Broke my heart.” Donghyuck sniffs, and Mark breaks out into a full-on laugh. 

Donghyuck just smiles, leaning back on his hands and looking up at the crowns of the trees around them. 

“You know,” He speaks up again, a little while after Mark calmed down. “It’s only about 10 minutes to my family’s house from here. We took a few detours on the way, thanks to the stream and all…” 

As he trails off, Mark turns to look at him, a weird feeling in his stomach. This is probably where Donghyuck bids him goodbye and goes to meet his family, who’ve been waiting for him for a while now, and Mark will have to make the whole way back to his house alone. He doesn’t hate being alone in his forest, not at all, most times it’s why he comes there in the first place, but somehow the last few hours have been more pleasant for him than any sort of ‘me-time’ he’s had here in the past years. 

He hasn’t made any friends ever since Jaemin and Renjun back in 1st grade, not really, not ones he’d call that, and he kind of feels that if Donghyuck leaves right now, he won’t be seeing him again so soon. 

That’s okay, he supposes. They weren’t actually meant to meet anyways, Donghyuck shouldn’t have been here. Their ways parting will just be the natural order of things shifting back into place and everything will go back to--

“Hey, airhead. Are you even listening to me?” 

Mark didn’t realize that Donghyuck had continued to talk. “Sorry. What did you say?” 

Donghyuck huffs. “I _said_ that you seem like you need friends. I deducted that with my incredibly sharp senses from the fact that you only ever mention four people, and two of those are your brother who you live with and his boyfriend who you also kind of live with, so they barely count.” 

He isn’t wrong, Mark thinks begrudgingly, but he still asks: “So?” 

“So…” Donghyuck drops his gaze in favour of picking up a pebble from the ground and throwing it into the water. “You should come with me and meet my brothers.” 

“Oh, I’m...really?” That’s not what Mark expected. 

“Yeah.” Donghyuck nods, throwing another pebble. “That’s two more potential new friends, you know?” 

Mark knits his eyebrows together. “I thought you had two brothers?” 

“Yeah?” Donghyuck turns to him then, one eyebrow lifted. “So _two_ new friends?” 

“But with you that’s three.” Mark tries, and looks back at Donghyuck in surprise when he starts laughing. 

“Oh, you’re adorable.” Donghyuck brings out in between laughter. It makes Mark lower his eyes again, a bit bashful, as Donghyuck gets up and walks over to where Mark is sitting. 

As he stands above him, he smiles: “We’re already friends, dummy.”

He offers a hand to pull Mark up, and as soon they’re both standing, he doesn’t let go. Instead, he pulls Mark off into the forest and announces: “Let’s go meet some more dummies.” 

***

“Honey, I’m home!” Donghyuck sing-songs as the door falls shut behind Mark. 

The house is cute. Adorable even, as far as Mark knows house-descriptors. It’s on the smaller side, and from the outside it gives off the impression like it was cramped into the space between at least five other, bigger houses, but there isn’t actually anything around but trees on one side and a clearing on the other. It’s a simple brick building, the inside walls all painted in pretty pastel colours, the windows adorned with decorative curtains that match the walls. 

“Looks a bit like a nice old lady lives here with her 50 cats, huh?” Donghyuck grins as he turns back to Mark taking it all in. “Well, it’s actually just my older brother, living here with my other brother’s three cats. So it’s close, but not quite there.” Louder, he yells into the house: “Is _anyone_ gonna welcome me back home?!” 

“Welcome!” Comes a cheer, very lifeless if someone asks Mark, from behind a door to their left, shortly before it opens. “Only took you nearly 20 years.” Says the boy stepping out into the hallway. 

All Mark can really see of him is a mop of black hair, before Donghyuck releases a noise somewhere between a cheer and a war cry and bolts towards the boy, all but jumping into his arms. 

“I missed you too, Jen!” He exclaims, his head buried in the other’s shoulder. 

“Yeah, yeah.” The boy-Jeno, Mark guesses- gives back with a small smile. He goes to say more, but his eyes meet Mark’s then over Donghyuck’s shoulder and the smile falls from his face. 

“Uh, Donghyuck? Who is this?” He asks, pushing Donghyuck back a bit by his shoulders. 

“Oh! This is Mark,he-” Donghyuck begins, but is cut off by another voice. 

“Donghyuck! You’re home, I- _Holy fucking shit_ you brought someone with you.” Another man steps out into the hallway, a rag in his hand forgotten as he drops it at the sight of Mark. 

He gets the feeling the residents of this house aren’t really to visits from strangers. He can relate to that. 

There’s a short exchange of greetings, Donghyuck forcing another tight hug on Taeyong, before stepping back next to Mark with a wide grin. 

“As I was saying, this is Mark! I found him in the forest.” Donghyuck takes Mark’s face in between his hands and squishes his cheeks together, for no apparent reason. “Can we keep him?” 

Instead of accepting or denying the suggestion, Jeno runs a hand down his face as Taeyong exclaims: “Donghyuck!” 

“What?” Donghyuck lets his hands drop from Mark’s cheeks. 

“You know exactly what!” Taeyong hisses in between his teeth. “You just ‘found’ him?! Does he- Did you-” He lowers his voice. “Did you tell him?” 

“No.” Donghyuck hurries to say, shaking his head. Then he hesitates and turns his eyes to the ceiling, obviously in thought. “At least not explicitly.” 

“What didn’t you tell me explicitly?” Mark asks. He kind of feels like this is not how the typical visit at a new friend’s house goes, but what does he know? He doesn’t have many references, and Donghyuck seems rather relaxed, so he can be too, he guesses. 

Donghyuck opens his mouth, but he’s cut off. “Nothing. He told you _nothing_.” Taeyong says. “And he’s not going to.” He adds then, pointing an accusing finger at his brother. 

“...Okay.” Mark nods.

“Taeyong, you seem insane.” Jeno speaks up then, with a little roll of his eyes. “Please calm down.” 

“Exactly, Taeyong.” Donghyuck affirms. “Please calm down.” 

“The same goes for you.” Jeno directs at Donghyuck, then turns to Mark. “What did Donghyuck tell you about us and himself?” 

“Oh, uh...a lot.” Mark answers, unprepared for being directly addressed like this. “He told me about zoos you guys went to. And lots of facts on bananas. And that this is your family’s house but only Taeyong really lives here permanently and you two travel a lot. A-And about that one time you thought you lost one of the cats but she was just chilling in the dishwasher.” 

He trails off then, and it’s quiet for a few seconds, before Jeno nods. “Alright. Taeyong, there’s no reason to be like this, Donghyuck, you’re an idiot.” Jeno says to his brothers. He sends a wide smile Mark’s way and adds: “Mark, do you want a glass of apple juice?” 

Mark nods, and that’s how his first afternoon at the Lee’s house starts. 

***

 _“Hey,buddy!”_ Johnny’s metallic voice drones out of Mark’s laptop speakers. _“How’s it going?”_

 _“We saw meerkats!”_ Ten chimes in, appearing on the screen behind Johnny. 

“Were they super cool and special?” Mark inquires, shoving a spoon of cold ravioli into his mouth. 

Ten nods enthusiastically. _”The coolest and specialest.”_ he affirms seriously. He cracks then, his expression morphing into a grin as he throws an arm around Johnny’s shoulder. _”No, but really, what have you been up to? Are you bored without us?”_

Until this very day, Mark had been bored, but he doesn’t exactly want to admit that, so he doesn’t. “Not at all.” he says. “I’m having a pretty good time here.” 

As if to emphasise his point, he lifts up the can of ravioli he’s eating from. 

_”Did you heat those up?”_ Johnny asks, but the expression on his face already betrays that he knows the answer. 

“Nope.” Mark grins. “Too lazy.” 

_“You’re such a millenial.”_ Ten rolls his eyes. _“You probably stayed home this entire time, being angry about republicans and one twitter hashtag or another, or capitalism.”_

 _”Fun fact: that’s what Ten has been doing when we haven’t been out at the Zoo or eating.”_ Johnny winks conspiratorially at the camera and gets a shove in the shoulder for it. 

Mark wants to protest and tell them about everything that happened today, about the strange boy that found him in the woods, about the boy’s just as strange family and their even stranger cats. He wants to tell them about the heavenly chocolate pudding Taeyong made, or the captivating way the brothers told him stories, about the special kind of bond that seems to be between them, about how they let Mark be part of it for this afternoon. 

But somehow, as he opens his mouth to tell Johnny and Ten all about it, something inside him rebels, something small and selfish, something that wants this special thing, this special place, these special people, to be special only to him. He shares his entire life with Johnny, and he’s thankful that his brother lets him, but it felt nice to have something to himself, to have a place entirely detached from his home and his family. 

“You know me too well.” Is what he says, quickly shoving more ravioli into his mouth so Johnny can’t grow suspicious of his fake smile. 

*** 

“I have to be home in exactly 2 hours and thirty-two minutes, can we do something not life-threatening before that?” 

Mark knows that he is whining and he knows Donghyuck is not going to take him seriously because of it, but it’s very warm, and Donghyuck wants to climb what looks like the highest tree in a thirty mile radius and Mark still has to mentally prepare for having Johnny and Ten back home. 

“Tree-climbing isn’t life threatening.” Donghyuck says, not slowing down in his pursuit for the tree. “Being and idiot while climbing a tree, _that_ could potentially be life-threatening.” 

“You called me an idiot about four times in the last ten minutes.” Mark reminds him, sending a wistful look back to Donghyuck’s house at the other end of the clearing before following the other boy with far less purpose. He would love to sit down in the ancient rocking chair back there and drink Taeyong’s latest infused water concoction with Nal on his lap, yet here he is. Donghyuck is standing below the tree, tapping his foot impatiently until Mark catches up. 

“I’ve climbed this tree millions of times, and look! I’m still alive!” He says, and snorts right after, even though Mark can’t tell what about his statement was that funny. He just gives him a pained grimace as a reply. 

Donghyuck sighs. “You don’t have to go up of you don’t want to. But I’m going to, and you’re missing out on one hell of a view, so suit yourself!” He pats Mark’s cheek and before Mark can reply anything, he’s already three branches off the ground. 

“Be careful.” Mark wants to call after him, but it comes out more of an awkward mumble. Donghyuck still turns around and sticks his tongue out at him for it. 

Mark watches him until he can only vaguely make out the red of Donghyuck’s shirt through the leaves, then settles for sitting against the tree trunk and starts flipping through the camera roll of his phone. 

Mark has never been one to take an awful lot of photos, mostly because he never really had anything to take photos of. In the last couple of days he has used his phone’s camera more times than in the past three years combined, probably. 

The latest batch of pictures is a series of at least thirty selfies Donghyuck and him took out of boredom yesterday. Jeno photobombed about ten of them and in one Mark can see Taeyong peeking through the door to their living room. 

There’s pictures of the house and the woods surrounding them after that. Mark took all of them simply because something about the moment felt like it needed to be preserved, like it was worth lasting forever at least on a phone screen. He hadn’t really intended for all of them to have anything in common, and yet, as he scrolls back through them now, he realizes that they do. 

Donghyuck is in all of them. 

It makes sense, Mark muses, clicking on a shot he is particularly proud of. They were sitting by the stream, the sunlight streaming down and making Donghyuck’s skin glow, his eyes sparkle. 

Everything about Donghyuck and about the strange yet comfortable world he had taken Mark into, about their newfound friendship, seems like it is worth to last forever. While talking to Donghyuck, Mark always feels time as merely the concept that it is, like only the moment the two of them are in is important, and everything before or after that loses its significance. 

But later, when he’s alone on his way back home or laying awake, he finds his thoughts circling around the “later” about the “tomorrow” about possibilities. 

Donghyuck has only been with him for a few days, and yet as he sits under this ancient cherry tree, he thinks that he wouldn’t mind Donghyuck to be there for however long eternity lasts. 

It could be a frightening thought but it isn’t, for a myriad of reasons. 

There is the comfortable echo the thought leaves in his chest, the soft way it settles there as if there’s always been a space reserved for it. It’s a warm type of familiarity that makes Mark think of stories about red strings, puzzle pieces, about two halves of the same heart. 

There is the thrilling novelty of it all, a bright, piercing note that ties his stomach into knots only to immediately release them into a thousand butterflies. Mark has made friends before, at least two, but this is something different, something entirely new and exciting. 

There is the sudden yell, and a crack of wood, followed by a loud thud a few metres in front of Mark only seconds later. 

“Fuck.” Mark hisses, jumping to his feet, his eyes immediately going up to the tree. He can vaguely make out a snapped branch dangling very high up, way too high, so high it makes worry twist in his gut. “Fuck, Hyuck, are you okay?” 

Some numbers from physics class flash before his eyes, his teachers voice droning on about the minimum distance that makes a fall lethal, and in his head it’s the exact distance that dangling branch has from the ground. 

He crouches down next to Donghyuck’s unmoving body. “Donghyuck?” He repeats carefully, his voice coming out rough and uneven with fear of what could have happened. He doesn’t dare to touch Donghyuck and move him so that he can see his face, out of sheer dread that his mind might be right. 

The Donghyuck shaped knot of limbs groans, then moves. “I did more elegant things in life.” 

“Donghyuck!” Mark repeats, because he doesn’t know what else to say. He dares to reach out a hand now and steady Donghyuck’s shoulder as the boy sits up. “Are you alright?” 

“I am, my ego on the other hand, is very bruised.” Donghyuck grumbles, and moves to stand up. 

Mark places his other hand on Donghyuck’s other shoulder and keeps him in place. “Careful. You definitely broke something from that fall.” 

“I definitely did not.” Donghyuck gives back, and before Mark can lecture him about how pain from broken bones can be cancelled out by the shock and the adrenaline in his body and he can call him a nerd for it, Donghyuck is on his feet, shrugging a handful of leaves from his shoulders. 

Mark blinks once, twice, until he’s pretty sure it doesn’t count as blinking anymore, it’s gaping. “How?” Is all he gets out in his astonishment. 

“Uhm.” Donghyuck’s eyes drift back up to the branch he fell from. “Luck?” 

Mark knows that no amount of that could prevent at least a broken bone or seven from a height like that, and he knows that Donghyuck knows so too, from the way he nervously shuffles his feet, so he just keeps gaping at him. 

Donghyuck’s expression turns into something pained. “Can’t we just be happy that I survived such a risky fall and get on with our lives?”

“I am happy.” Mark assures him, the _because I was kind of just reminiscing about spending eternity with you and it would have been very ironic if you died_ is left unsaid. After a few beats of silence and Donghyuck avoiding his eyes, he carefully asks: “Does this have something to do with what you’re not supposed to tell me?” 

He had realised it sometimes, over the last few days, when Jeno threw Donghyuck a warning glance and they immediately changed the subject, when Taeyong interrupted himself in the middle of a sentence and said something entirely different instead. The brothers are constantly dancing around a huge elephant in the room, carefully maneuvering Mark around it with them, that close to hitting it full-force several times a day. Mark feels like he and Donghyuck are about to crash into it. 

He sees the cogs turn in Donghyuck’s head, watches his mouth open and close as he flounders for an excuse or another change in subject when it’s pretty clear that they can’t avoid this. A few leaves are still floating down from where Donghyuck fell. 

After some more moments of tense silence, Donghyuck visibly deflates. “Yes.” He breathes. 

Mark nods, even though Donghyuck has dropped his gaze and can’t see. “Okay.” 

He doesn’t ask more, gives Donghyuck the option to drop it if he wants to, leaves that bit of room for the conversation to swerve and the tension to drop, but none of it happens. Donghyuck stays just as silent as he was, the conversation doesn’t move one bit and the tension grows even thicker as he takes a few steps and sits down next to Mark. 

Usually, Donghyuck is larger than life. It is a weird thing to say about someone so small, but Mark still found himself thinking so a lot over the past few days. The way Donghyuck talks, holds himself, looks at the world, speaks of something more, something that Mark didn’t know could have room in a life as narrow as his own. 

Yet right now, it’s like Donghyuck folded in on himself, his knees tucked closely to his chest, his arms wrapped around them, his eyes barely peeking over them, not looking at Mark with that usual spark in them, but unfocused, looking at nothing in particular. 

“I hate keeping this from you.” He says quietly. It’s muffled, and Mark doesn’t dare to reply anything. “Taeyong always emphasised how bad lying is when we were growing up and told us to always tell the truth and-- we’re not lying to you.” His eyes focus back on Mark for a second. “I wouldn’t lie to you, Mark.” 

He hurries to nod, still not trusting his voice, but still wanting Donghyuck to know that he understands, that he knows. 

Donghyuck’s eyes drop again as he continues. “But we’re not telling you the truth either. Taeyong says it’s safer like that, for you too and, honestly, he’s full of shit. This has nothing to do with your safety it’s just a huge thing between us and it’s-- I don’t want anything in between us.” 

He starts picking at a loose thread on his jeans. His voice is even quieter than before, even smaller. “I haven’t made a friend in a really, really long time.” 

Mark wants nothing more than to wrap Donghyuck up in his arms in that moment, to hold him close, tell him that it’s okay, that he’s his friend and he will forever be his friend no matter what he is telling him or not telling him, but something about the tense set of Donghyuck’s jaw keeps him quiet. 

The next few moments are filled with Donghyuck’s shaky breathing, the sound of the stream in the distance, a few birds singing to the tune of it, accompanied by the rustling of leaves in the wind. It’s easy to get lost in this melody, easy to forget that life is happening when you’re caught up in the symphony of it, and Mark only snaps back to reality when Donghyuck suddenly sits up straight. 

His eyes still aren’t back to their usual gleam, but there is something different burning in them now, something defiant and set in stone, as he gets to his feet. 

“Come on, I have to show you something.” He announces, holding a hand out to pull Mark up. 

Maybe, this is where he changes the subject and they won’t speak of it again. Mark thinks that he’s okay with that, but he also thinks that he never wants to see Donghyuck as dejected as he looked right there, and he decides that he’s gonna show him that they can still be friends, that they are, even if they go on like this. 

He doesn’t let go of Donghyuck’s hand after he gets up and they walk into the forest like that. 

They don’t talk for a while, but it’s not because the tension is silencing them anymore. It had been left on the clearing, left to watch them walk deeper into the forest, reaching out but not managing to grab them, out of sight as soon as they caught sight of the stream. 

The silence surrounding them now is full of noise, of understanding, of the feeling of Donghyuck’s hand in Mark’s. There is also a question still, something unanswered, but it’s not bothering him. He thinks about eternity again, and how he’d be okay with waiting that long. 

It’s about twenty minutes later when Donghyuck pulls on his arm slightly and Mark looks up at him. 

“We’re nearly there.” 

“Isn’t it funny how you’re basically showing me around my own forest?” Mark muses. It brings a small smile to Donghyuck’s lips, nothing even close to the supernova they usually hold, but a smile nevertheless. 

“I think I’ve spent a lot more time in this forest than you have.” He says. 

Mark thinks that that’s very unlikely, considering that Donghyuck had told him he’s been here last 16 years ago, but he doesn’t say it. Something about the logic, the simplicity of the statement doesn’t match with the light falling through the crowns, the warped sounds of their steps and the water, the impossible, dream-like way their fingers are tangled together. 

Donghyuck reaches out his free hand to bend a branch out of the way and they step out into another clearing. This one is far smaller than the Lees’, and there’s an atmosphere about it that makes Mark think that he probably wouldn’t have found it on his own. He feels like he’s stepped into a fairy tale when the branch snaps back into place behind him. 

A few steps ahead of them is what he knows to be the foot of a smaller hill. On the opposite side of it, looped around it like stars are looped around the dark side of the moon, is one of the busiest parts of town, all apartment complexes and traffic. But this side is illuminated by sunlight, the crater they were standing in flanked by pine trees, a low wall of rocks to one side that looked nearly artistic as if every small pebble had been arranged. Between two rocks, water bubbles up. 

“It’s the spring.” Mark notes with a smile. “I’ve been meaning to look for that over the summer.” 

It elicits a laugh from Donghyuck, for whatever reason. “Of course you’ve been meaning to.” 

He pulls Mark closer to the water and they sit down right next to it, high grass swaying around them. 

It’s peaceful, for the little while they stay silent, and it’s peaceful when Donghyuck starts talking. 

“When we first came here, Taeyong, Jeno and me, we… We didn’t really have a lot to our name. We only really had the cats, our father’s old dog and a bunch of Taeyong’s books. He said it would be okay, you know, ever the optimist. He said he would find work in no time and everything would work out.” 

Donghyuck isn’t looking at Mark while speaking, but at the water making its way into the forest. He laughs once, more a breath. “I stole his diary once when he was asleep, on the way here. What he wrote there didn’t actually sound so sure… But that’s not the point.” 

He leans back on his hands and turns his eyes to the clouds above them. “We were on our way to the city, but it was getting late and we couldn’t have reached it before nightfall anyways, so we decided to take a break here. That is, me and Jeno decided, Taeyong had a small mental breakdown about wild animals mauling us in our sleep, but we refused to walk more, so he didn’t really have a choice. So we stayed the night, we weren’t murdered by a deer, we got up in the morning, drank from this spring and went to the city.” 

It seems like a peculiar story to Mark, like it doesn’t really fit, with what he can’t say, but things seem to be missing from it making it a jigsaw puzzle without solution. 

“It went pretty good from there on out. Taeyong got a job with the local blacksmith, he befriended the forest warden. His name was Taeil, he was pretty cool. He gave us the house, you know? It belonged to his family but Taeil was on his own and said it was too big for him alone, so he let us stay with him and he even let us stay when…” Donghyuck clears his throat. “He let us stay.” 

“It was… It was good. Jeno started an apprenticeship with the baker. I met the mayor’s daughter at one point, her name was Yerim, and we became friends. She always snuck out books for me from her father’s library, said if I managed to catch up she could sneak me into her summer lessons and I could come to school with her. That was a pretty big thing, you know? Taeyong nearly fell off his chair when I told him. Of course he lectured me for stealing books first, but he knew that we weren’t really in the position to pass up the chance of me going to school, not many kids from the country got to even think that far back then. I actually did go, for about a year. Then I had to stop.” 

More and more pieces from the jigsaw puzzle break off while Mark listens to Donghyuck, and even when he goes quiet now, it keeps crumbling. The pieces are floating to the ground, and on impact a small cloud of dust rises. Mark can’t quite make out what is left of it through the haze, but the outlines of it feel off, feel like something that can’t, shouldn’t be reality. 

It feels like a small eternity has passed, when Donghyuck speaks up again, blowing the dust away with it. “That was about 1840.” 

Any other time, it would be one of Donghyuck’s many off-hand jokes, a comment that Mark laughs about, said with a peculiar smile, too heavy for Donghyuck’s features, never mentioned again. But right now, it falls in line with every other similar comment he made over the past few days, or rather they fall in line with it. 

“You’re not joking.” Mark says, not a question but an observation. “You weren’t joking before.” 

Donghyuck keeps his eyes on the clouds as he shakes his head. “I’m blessed with an impeccable sense of humour, but that wasn’t part of it.” 

Mark looks at him for a while, observes the way the sunlight streams in patterns on his face, the way the wind plays with his hair and tries to imagine how the same sun and the same wind had done just that, on a day just like this, but without Mark being there, without Mark even being alive, without anyone Mark knows being alive. 

“How?” Is all he brings out. 

Donghyuck moves then, shifting his gaze again but still not on Mark. The water reflects the sunlight and Donghyuck’s eyes mirror it as he watches the spring. 

“It’s the water.” He says. “We all drank from it that morning, the cats too. Everyone but the dog. The animals were all really old, it wasn’t really surprising that he died the year after, what was surprising was that the cats survived him, and survived for years after that. It was what made us realize that we weren’t aging either. 

We tried it out, Jeno and me. Taeyong didn’t want to hear anything about it at first, so we tried to prove it to him. There’s a squirrel running around this forest somewhere that’s should have been dead for nearly two centuries.” 

It makes Mark laugh despite everything, a sound that seems foreign as it echoes over the clearing. 

“Taeyong glares at it whenever he sees it. He...He only started believing us when Taeil got sick. It was something bad, something contagious. Tuberculosis probably, but I don’t actually know. He told us to bring him to a hospital, but he loved his house, you know? We didn’t want him to leave and we knew he didn’t actually want to. So Jeno and me insisted on caring for him instead. Taeyong didn’t want us to, he was terrified we would get sick too, but Taeil had believed us from the start so we just outvoted Taeyong. Taeil died a few weeks later. Jeno and me were entirely fine, even though most of the nurses in the local hospital had caught whatever it was too. That’s when Taeyong started thinking that maybe we were right.” 

Something far off had settled in Donghyuck’s eyes.

“It’s weird, you know? Seeing people die around you… I wasn’t actually around for Yerim’s death. I promised her I would be, when I told her about the spring, but letters are so fucking slow and it was already too late when I got here and-” He takes a deep breath, releases it not quite steadily. “I talked to her daughter though. She said that Yerim understood, and that she died peacefully, in her sleep. Yerim was the only person who ever knew about all of this.” 

That’s when Donghyuck finally looks at Mark, for the first time since they reached the clearing. “Until now.” 

A few birds chirp an unknown melody, before Mark replies: “I’m glad you told me.” 

Something shifts in Donghyuck’s gaze as Mark holds it, something like a question, asking for assurance, asking if Mark is sure he believes, is sure he understands, is sure he accepts. He replies with a small smile and Donghyuck mirrors it, throws it back ten times brighter, as he lets himself drop back into the grass. Mark can practically see the weight floating from his chest.

He lays down too, a few of his thoughts wandering into unknown territory, into the _‘what now’_ into the _‘what if’_ , into thousands of questions that he can’t possibly have answers to, but Mark thinks that for now, this is enough. 

The birds and the stream and the trees are continuing their song, and if he listens closely he can hear his heart beat to the rhythm, and he is sure that Donghyuck’s heart does the same, and nothing else matters, not even things like life and death and eternity. 

*** 

“We’re home!” Ten announces unnecessarily as he dumps his duffel bag onto the living room floor, as if other people than Mark, who opened the door for him, are present. He missed Ten and Johnny.

“Did you bring pictures of the meerkats?” Mark asks as he perches onto a stool. 

Ten’s eyes twinkle when he gives back: “We brought something better.” 

“Did you bring _actual_ meerkats?” 

“Kind of!” Ten calls out from where his head is basically buried in his bag as he goes through it. 

“Ten bought half of the souvenir shop.” Johnny informs Mark from the doorway. There’s a soft smile on his face as he watches Ten finally emerge from his duffel. 

A second later, Mark only barely registers multiple fuzzy brown things flying towards him before he’s hit in the head by two of them. 

“We bought a whole family of anatomically correct stuffed meerkats for you!” Ten grins. “As a thank you, for covering for us, and as an apology, for leaving you alone.” 

Mark picks up one of the plushies and thoughtfully pats down the synthetic fur on top of his head. “What am I supposed to do with-” He looks around to count. “Five meerkat plushies?” 

“Love them and care for them.” Johnny throws in from the sidelines. 

“You could give some to friends, everyone likes plushies.” Ten adds. 

Mark grins. He likes that idea. 

*** 

“Catch!” Mark yells as he steps into the Lees’ living room. 

Donghyuck drops the book he’s been holding to the ground with a loud clatter, to catch the stuffed animal with both hands. 

“What’s this for?” He asks, but doesn’t actually leave room for Mark to answer before he squeals: “Oh my god, it’s so _cute_.” 

“Ten and Johnny brought back a small army of them yesterday from that zoo they went to.” Mark explains, sitting down on the couch. Immediately, Bongsik jumps down from the windowsill and curls up in his lap with a content meow. “I thought you’d like one.” 

“I do!” Donghyuck affirms, eyes still fixed on his new anatomically correct and lifeless fuzzy friend. “I love him.”

Mark starts going through a stack of DVDs on the coffeetable. “Happy Birthday.” He jokes absentmindedly. 

He reads the title of one of the movies and snorts. Only three days ago, Donghyuck and him had discussed the significance of the _Twilight_ franchise to society, and apparently Donghyuck did some retroactive research. 

“You’re late.” Donghyuck lets him know as he sits down next to him. “My birthday was two weeks ago.” 

“Really?” Mark looks up from the DVDs to see Donghyuck nod. 

It’s clear that Donghyuck is still apprehensive, still waiting for Mark to say something scathing about what he told him yesterday, still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Mark hates the slight tension that still lingers in the air, and he hates how it fuels his own thoughts, trying to force him to think about this, think about it too much. 

His eyes drift back over the plastic cases in search for some kind of distraction, some kind of assurance maybe, and when they stop on the same one as before, a small smile forms on his face. 

“Hey, Hyuckie?” He asks, taking the DVD in his hand slowly. 

Donghyuck looks up from the plushie in his hands at the mention of the nickname. “Yeah?” 

“How old are you?” Mark continues, tapping a slow beat on the DVD case. 

“Onehu-” Donghyuck starts, and Mark taps on the case louder, drawing Donghyuck’s eyes to it. His brows crease in confusion for a second, before Mark sees understanding bloom on his face, mirth igniting in his eyes. 

“Seventeen.” Donghyuck says, and there’s a smile on his lips now too. 

“How long have you been seventeen?” Mark goes on, his question slightly wobbly with an oncoming laugh. 

Donghyuck is doing his best to stay serious as he replies: “A while.” 

As soon as he says it, they both collapse back into the couch in laughter. Bongsik lets out an appalled noise and jumps off of Mark’s lap as he shakes with giggles and leans into Donghyuck’s shoulder. 

It’s a small bubble of normalcy, of reassurance and comfort, and it lasts right up until Taeyong bursts it. 

“You told him.” He states, standing in the doorway to the kitchen as if he hasn’t moved in millenia. 

The immediate reaction visible on Donghyuck’s face is to deny it, and Taeyong can see it just as much as Mark. “Don’t lie to me.” He says. Mark can’t really read any emotion out of it, no judgement or anger and if he’s honest he can’t quite imagine Taeyong being angry. 

Donghyuck’s expression turns defiant. “Okay, I won’t lie to you.” He tells Taeyong. “Just as I’m not lying to Mark anymore.” His arms cross over his chest, a subconscious gesture that betrays the sharp tone of his voice. “What are you going to do about it?” 

That’s when Taeyong deflates slightly. He steps out of the doorway and makes his way over to the armchair across from them, lifting up Nal and setting her back on his lap as soon as he’s seated. “Nothing.” He replies. 

Mark and Donghyuck both blink at him in return, so he continues: “I can’t change the fact that you told him and that he knows now, can I? All I can really do is let you know that I’m disappointed that you broke your word, Donghyuck.” 

“I get it, you’re not mad, you’re just disappointed.” Donghyuck rolls his eyes. 

“Oh, I am mad. I’m furious actually, but that doesn’t change that what’s done is done.” Taeyong corrects him and Mark thinks he’s never felt this much respect and/or genuine fear for anyone in his life before. It’s what makes him jump the tiniest bit when Taeyong turns to him now. “Mark. I hope that you know that it doesn’t have anything to do with you, personally. This is a very big, very peculiar thing and having more people know means making it even bigger than it has to be.” 

He hurries to nod. “I understand.” 

Taeyong mirrors his nod, slower and thoughtful. “I’m sure Hyuck had good reasons to tell you.” 

“He did.” Donghyuck himself throws back at his brother, his eyes narrowed in some kind of challenge. 

Taeyong doesn’t take him up on it, just turns his calm gaze on him, lifts a lazy eyebrow and asks: “And what were they?” 

If Mark squints he can maybe see a small bit of mirth in Taeyong’s eyes, something teasing, but he doesn’t know what to make of it. 

Donghyuck next to him does something Mark has rarely seen him do. He flounders. “I- I thought… He-...” He interrupts himself with a forceful breath. “I fell from a tree.” He concludes. 

Now it’s on Taeyong to narrow his eyes, in question. 

“He should’ve died from the fall.” Mark explains. 

“I didn’t.” Donghyuck adds. “Surprise!” 

Taeyong’s eyes stay narrowed and focused on his brother for a little while longer, before he slowly drags them over to Mark. He feels like the explanation is neither what he wanted to hear, nor what he somehow knows is true, and yet it is the truth. They just told him what happened. Mark doesn’t really know what more reasoning Taeyong would expect. 

“Well, this was fun!” Donghyuck exclaims suddenly, ultimately breaking the weird atmosphere that Taeyong searching eyes created. “If you don’t mind, me and Mark are actually very busy. We should do this again sometime, have a nice day!” 

And with that, he pulls Mark up and out of the room with him, not stopping until they’re in his bedroom. 

“That went way better than I thought it would.” Mark allows. 

“Taeyong just likes being dramatic.” 

“Must be a family thing.” 

Donhyuck’s eyes snap to him at that and a devious grin forms on his face. “Watch it, rich boy.” 

“I say nothing but the truth!” Mark laughs, throwing his hands up. 

He shouldn’t have, because now his sides are defenseless, and Donghyuck sees, and he acts. Not ten seconds later, the two of them collapse to Donghyuck’s bedroom floor, his fingers digging into Mark’s sides and Mark up in hysteric giggles. 

About three minutes later, Mark gets a hold of Donghyuck’s wrists. “Hold on.” He says out of breath when Donghyuck struggles against his hold. “ _Please_ stop.” 

Donghyuck stills and they stay like that for a short while, slightly out of breath from laughing and Donghyuck sitting basically on his lap. It should probably be uncomfortable, but Donghyuck is looking down at him with the remnants of a smile still playing around his lips and Mark can feel his heartbeat where he’s still holding onto his wrists. It’s faster than it should be and yet it still falls in time with his own, a crescendo working towards a revelation with every beat. 

*** 

The revelation comes to him two weeks later. 

He is walking home on his own as the sun begins to set, his backpack heavy with a bunch of comic books Jeno let him burrow. Most of them are vintage and had gone out of print decades ago and he doesn’t really know how he’s gonna explain to Johnny how he got his hands on them, but that’s a worry for another time. 

Right now his head is full of other things.

Golden light breaks through green and it reminds Mark of Donghyuck laying in the grass next to him, eyes closed, the sun painting glowing patterns on his face. 

He hears the water of the stream in the distance still, and it reminds Mark of Donghyuck’s laughter, melodic and bright. 

It’s a part of the forest’s song, just as Donghyuck is a part of the forest. It’s just as much his as it’s Mark’s. 

Mark thinks about these things, thinks about Donghyuck telling him stories, making him laugh, about Donghyuck’s hand in his and when he gets home and finds Johnny sitting in the living room he asks: “How did you know you were in love with Ten?” 

Johnny raises both of his eyebrows as he pauses the movie playing on the TV and turns to face his brother. “Mark.” He says and it’s heavy in many ways that Mark doesn’t like, but not in any he hasn’t expected. “Is this what I think it is?” 

Mark humours him and prompts him to specify. 

“Do I finally get to give you some quality older brother advice for something actually _relevant_?” 

All Mark gets in is a roll of his eyes before Johnny continues: “How and when did this happen anyways, you never meet new people. Is it one of your friends? Mina? Did you meet someone on the internet? No judgement by the way, but mom and dad are going to hate that.” 

“Can you just answer my question?” Mark sighs. Maybe he should have asked Ten. 

“I deserve some background info!” Johnny exclaims. The way he crosses his arms tells Mark that he won’t get his answer before he gives some of his own. 

“Well, I actually _do_ meet new people. Or have, this once at least. It’s kind of a long story.” He’ll have to think about this in detail so he doesn’t accidentally tell Johnny about the Lees’ secret. Taeyong would have a seizure, probably. Mark hopes that Johnny will leave it at that. 

And he does, kind of, but that doesn’t mean Mark is off the hook. “So, what’s her name?” Johnny asks, and as this point Mark feels too much regret to even sigh. 

“Donghyuck.” He answers and he can see Johnny’s wiggling eyebrows freeze. It’s a small victory. 

“Oh, it’s-” Johnny starts and interrupts himself. “I mean, that’s--” 

“A boy’s name, yes.” Mark’s tone is just short of exasperation. “It’s a boy, can you please answer my question now?” 

“First of all I want you to know that I love and accept you--” 

“Yeah, yeah.” Mark cuts him off. “We’re all gay here, let’s move on.” 

“I’m just saying, Ten kept telling me you weren’t straight and I kept saying to him, Ten, I said, I’m pretty sure he is, but that’s okay, sometimes your baby brother is a heterosexual and you just have to deal with that and--” 

“Okay, I give up, I’m leaving.” 

“No!” 

Johnny is out of his seat and in front of Mark faster than it should be humanly possible. “I’ll shut up, I promise!”

So they sit down, and they talk. Mark keeps the story of how he met Donghyuck carefully vague, doesn’t trust himself to not cause a huge catastrophe for everyone involved otherwise, but he still thinks he gets the point across really well. The point being, that sometimes his heart stutters when Donghyuck smiles at him, and sometimes he has to sit on his hands so he doesn’t reach out and traces the moles on Donghyuck’s cheeks and how all of this happened in such a short time. The point is that Mark is confused, and maybe even a little bit scared. 

Johnny’s eyes are gentle when Mark finishes and before he says anything he gestures for him to come closer. Mark has gotten too tall to disappear in Johnny’s hugs like he used to, but they’re still warm and familiar. 

So are Johnny’s words, and when Mark goes to sleep that night, everything seems a little less scary, a little less dramatic, a little more like something he can handle. 

***

It’s about three weeks later when things start to clash and collide, slowly, but surely. 

“A friend of yours came into the shop today.” Jaemin tells Mark when they join Renjun at a table in their regular coffeeshop.

Mark blinks at him for a second, because it’s weird for Jaemin to talk about someone who was only Mark’s friend. Mark doesn’t have any friends that aren’t also Jaemin’s friends, besides--

“I didn’t catch his name, but he came in with another guy, a little older, and they were talking about you. Also about their cats.” That makes more sense than anything else Jaemin has said so far. His mother runs a shop for pet toys. “They also talked about someone called Donghyuck.” Jaemin adds nonchalantly. He doesn’t catch the way Mark nearly lets his spoon fall into his cup, and neither does Renjun. 

“Do you just spend your days at work stalking your customers?” He asks with a judgmental raise of his eyebrow. 

“First of all, you would do the same. Second of all, I didn’t stalk them, I happened to hear them talk about Mark, and thought I might get some juicy info on our friend here from complete strangers.” Jaemin shoots Renjun a wide grin. 

“Doesn’t make it less creepy.” Renjun decides, and then turns to Mark, to his horror. 

“So who were they?” 

“Yeah.” Jaemin leans forward. “Are you making new friends who aren’t us? Are you leaving us behind, Markie?” 

It takes Mark a second to reply. It feels weird, to know that Jaemin practically met Jeno and Taeyong, it feels like two completely different dimensions of Mark’s life that shouldn’t be able to intersect. And yet on second thought, he can’t quite explain why. 

Jaemin and Renjun were there with him ever since he’d moved, probably did a better job at making him the person he is today than his parents had ever tried to. They are a part of what Mark thinks of as home, the same way Johnny and Ten are.

The Lees hadn’t been in his life for nearly as long, shouldn’t have been able to shape Mark nearly as much, and yet they had, with the air of home and comfort and magic around them, and how they let Mark be a part of it. 

Thinking about both of them now, Mark feels like he opened a dictionary, trying to find the meaning of “family” and he found two different definitions for the same thing. 

He tells Jaemin and Renjun about them, still not in too much detail, still scared to say too much, to mention things he can’t quite explain to them. 

“They sound cool.” Renjun says a while later. 

Jaemin nods along, then clears his throat. “Okay, I have one last very important question.” 

He looks at Mark seriously, and it makes him doubt himself. Had he slipped up at one point maybe? Jaemin is perceptive, maybe he caught onto something even if Mark had been careful. 

“Jeno. Is that his name? Jeno?” 

Mark hurries to nod. 

“Is he single?” 

He blinks at Mark expectantly and Mark blinks back at him and he’s pretty sure if he’d turn to the side he’d see Renjun blink at both of them. 

Mark gets up and walks over to the counter, ignoring Jaemin calling after him and Renjun starting to cackle quietly. 

***

Donghyuck can’t stop giggling when Mark tells him about it that night. 

“You just got up and left?” He asks, slightly out of breath. 

“Yeah. Jaemin is annoying.” Mark nods with finality. 

“Jeno doesn’t date anyways.” Donghyuck says and rolls onto his back. 

They’re both sprawled out on the floor in Donghyuck’s room, what feels like a million scented candles lighting it up even though Donghyuck owns a completely functional electric lamp. It’s for atmosphere, apparently. It smells like honey and oranges and vanilla and outside, the sun is slowly going down. 

“Maybe he just hasn’t found the one yet.” Mark chances. 

A short silence then: “Do you believe in that?” 

“What exactly?” 

“ _The one_.” Donghyuck repeats. His eyes are still on the ceiling and his face carefully blank. It’s not a judgemental question, far from it. He nearly manages to make it sound casual. “Nearly” is what makes Mark’s heart race.

“You mean, loving only one person, forever?” 

“ _‘Forever’_ is a very weighty word.” Donghyuck says. In any other situation it would have been a joke, but the air is heavy with the scent of honey and it feels too heavy for jokes. “But yeah, I guess that’s what I mean.” 

“You guess.” Mark repeats, and Donghyuck turns to him, his eyes narrowed. 

“Stop evading the question.” 

Mark sticks his tongue out at him, before turning his gaze to the flame of one candle. He wishes he could deny that he was avoiding the question, but it’s exactly what he was doing. It feels too serious, too close to something else. It feels like he’ll need at least five millenia and a thousand pages to answer. But he doesn’t have that kind of time and he can feel Donghyuck’s eyes on him, waiting for him to speak, so he says: “Yeah, I do.” 

Donghyuck nods, but doesn’t say anything more and Mark feels like he’s drowning in honey. 

“Johnny said he wants to meet you.” He blurts out, just to say _something_ and regrets it immediately afterwards, because surprise settles on Donghyuck’s face. 

“You told Johnny about me?” 

He can’t back out now, so he nods. “About all of you.” He adds, because it seems better somehow, more casual, less like something else. It’s not entirely true, he had only mentioned Jeno and Taeyong in passing, had mainly been talking, rambling, panicking about Donghyuck, but that’s exactly what he doesn’t want Donghyuck to know. 

“Not anything about the spring, though.” He clarifies. “Of course not. Just-- I don’t make a lot of new friends, you know?” He laughs nervously. It still feels like he’s drowning, but it’s not poetic anymore, not golden and sweet, just plain awkward. 

“Yeah, I can believe that.” Donghyuck grins. 

Mark narrows his eyes and reaches for the closest thing to throw at Donghyuck, a book. Donghyuck throws up his hands in defense. 

“I didn’t mean it like that!”

“Of course you didn’t.” Mark replies and rolls his eyes, but he lowers the book. 

“You’re just really awkward.” Donghyuck starts to explain and before Mark can tell him that yes, he’s aware of that, he continues: “I can tell you don’t really meet new people a lot. But you’re an amazing friend, like, you’re great to talk to and you’re really sweet.You just don’t get to show that to people a lot, you know?” He turns to lay on his side completely and faces Mark with a small smile. “Makes me feel special.” 

And Mark is an idiot so he blurts: “You are.” 

The smile never drops from Donghyuck’s lips. “I am?” 

“Y-yeah.” Mark nods and he would be entirely content to leave the conversation at that, but Donghyuck doesn’t seem to share the sentiment. 

“How so?” He asks. The candles’ flames reflect in his eyes. 

“You…” Mark starts and his voice is quiet with the anticipation of saying something meaningless. He takes a breath. He thinks about his conversation with Johnny.

His voice is louder, when he continues: “You’re special because- because there’s so many things about you that I shouldn’t even get to be a part of. I’m just me, you know, and you’re _you_ , you’re amazing and bright and magical, yet you still make me feel like I belong. And--” 

He’s cut off by Donghyuck’s mouth on his. 

It’s over just as suddenly as it started, just a quick press of lips before Donghyuck leans back again and looks at him. The lights reflecting in his eyes look like the night sky, like a thousand suns burning. Mark can feel their warmth resonating deeply within his chest, yet he can’t put it into words. 

Something about it seems to translate onto his face because Donghyuck says: “I-I’m sorry. Is this-- Was that okay?” 

Mark hurries to nod. “Yeah.” He breathes. He can’t look away from the stars in Donghyuck’s eyes. “I just wasn’t prepared.” 

“Oh.” Donghyuck nods. 

Mark mirrors it. They’re still looking at each other, Donghyuck’s hand is still resting at the junction of Mark’s shoulder and his neck, right above his heart. 

“I’m prepared now, I think.” Mark says. 

He’s pretty sure that Donghyuck can feel the speed at which his heart is beating, pretty sure that he knows it’s a lie. But Donghyuck smiles, and Mark smiles back. 

***

“Do you ever think about eternity?” Mark asks a few nights later, when he’s laying on the roof of his house. Their parents had strictly forbidden them to go up there, less out of worry that they would fall, more because of something to do with destroying the roof. 

Ten is sprawled out next to him, Johnny nowhere to be found since he got up to get more snacks. He’s pretty drunk, possibly he got lost on the way to the pantry. 

“Eternity?” Ten repeats. “Like, the future?” 

“No.” Mark shakes his head, props himself up on his elbow to look at Ten. Or he tries to, but his arms are a little wobbly. Maybe he shouldn’t have had that last bottle of beer after all. 

“I mean, like, forever, dude.” 

“So, the rest of my life?” 

Again, Mark shakes his head. “If you never had to die.” 

“That’s terrifying.” Ten immediately says when he finally understands. 

Mark blinks at him and Ten just blinks back. “Explain.” Mark demands. 

Ten huffs, takes another sip of the cheap boxed wine he brought. Johnny didn’t quite have the guts to steal from their parents’ expensive collection, not too much at least. 

“Well, for one, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. There’s only so many things to do, y’know? I get bored with myself after a weekend! And for two, it’s kinda sad, isn’t it? To be alone, for eternity? Seems sad.” 

“But what if you had someone with you?” 

Ten furrows his brows for a second, deep in thought. Then he shakes his head: “I’d want everyone in my life to be there forever, though. Like, if you have one person to stay with you forever, that’s nice and all, but everyone else is still gonna leave. Die. It’s sad.” 

Mark doesn’t even get to think about some kid of response, because Johnny chooses that moment to fall back onto the picnic blanket they’re all sharing. 

“I found brownies!” He announces, and that’s that. 

***

Mark never liked summer, for how lonely he felt during it. He thinks about it, about the hours trapped in the pristine white walls of his home that never felt like one. He felt out of place these past summers, like he should be somewhere else, somewhere _more_. 

He thinks that he probably can’t get any more than this, as he stops by a familiar turn in the stream. The song the birds above him are singing isn’t new anymore, it’s something familiar and comforting. The feeling of camaraderie isn’t something surprising anymore as he hears quiet steps approach him even before Donghyuck quietly reaches for his hand. 

School is starting the next week. 

“Did you finish that essay?” Donghyuck asks when they’re settled down on a patch of grass by the water. 

“Yep. None of the stuff you told me was of any help though.” 

“Excuse me, all of that were facts.” 

“I don’t think my history teacher is going to care.” 

Mark grins and Donghyuck grumbles something about not being appreciated enough and the conversation tickles out into comfortable silence. Donghyuck takes Mark’s hand in both of his this time and starts tracing patterns on it, following the lines the sunlight and the leaves above them are painting and creating his own. 

“By the way,” Mark speaks up after what could have been a small eternity. “Johnny told me to tell you that he really doesn’t bite.” 

Donghyuck laughs, but there’s something more to it. 

Somehow, every time in the last few weeks when Johnny had explicitly invited Donghyuck, something came up. One time Donghyuck said Nal was sick, which Mark knows for a fact isn’t possible.

He hasn’t questioned it yet, because of that something more to Donghyuck’s laugh, because of the something in his voice when he apologized to him for not making it again. He doesn’t quite understand it but he’s sure Donghyuck will explain it when he feels ready to. 

“I don’t think he bites.” Donghyuck says, quietly. His eyes are still on Mark’s hand. 

“Ten doesn’t either.” Mark tries for a joke. It doesn’t sound as funny as he meant it to be out loud. 

Donghyuck sighs. “I know.” He drops Mark’s hand in order to wrap his arms around his knees. “I’m sure they’re both wonderful.” 

Mark nods. “They are.” He says, but nothing more, just looks at Donghyuck and waits for him to explain or to change the subject. 

Donghyuck sighs again. “I don’t like to get attached to people.” He says, words muffled by how he’s folded in on himself. “It’s- It’s hard, to get attached to people when I know that one day they’ll be-- It’s hard.” 

Mark can feel something inside him melt at the way Donghyuck’s voice breaks, at the way he’s still not meeting Mark’s eyes and it hurts, to see him hurting. 

He shuffles closer, wraps an arm around Donghyuck and rests his head on top of his. It’s awkward, slightly too close and too tangled to be comfortable in the summer heat, but Donghyuck still leans back into him with a small sigh. 

“You did get attached to me though.” Mark notes.

Donghyuck can’t seem to hold back a small snort. “You made it really hard for me not to.” 

It’s clearly meant to be a joke, but Mark can’t gloss over the reality of what Donghyuck said before, so he replies, much too serious: “I’m sorry.” 

Donghyuck shakes off his arm to face him. “You don’t have to be sorry for anything. It happened and we’ll just… We’ll figure it out along the way, right?” 

“Right.” Mark agrees and then they fall back into silence and the next time Donghyuck speaks it’s to point out a cool looking bird somewhere above them. 

Mark knows that there’s a lot of things they should have talked about, a lot of things that still need to be said, but for now he is content with just Donghyuck next to him and the forest moving around them. 

***

The next time it’s brought up, it’s well into the next year. 

They’re sitting on his bedroom floor, Mark studying and Donghyuck alternating between reading and dozing off. 

At one point a few weeks into Mark’s senior year, Donghyuck had decided to ignore his own rules and had knocked at their front door as long as it took Johnny to open it, on 8AM on a Saturday. Despite that rather unwelcome time for a first meeting, Johnny had taken a liking to Donghyuck immediately. Ten still says Donghyuck is more of a demon than a boy, but Mark knows that he has his approval too. Ten makes sure to save the strawberry popsicles for when Donghyuck comes over. 

They never talked about it, Mark never asked about Donghyuck’s sudden change in heart and Donghyuck never brought it up, and life went on. They established a sort of normalcy that nearly makes Mark believe that they could be normal. Sometimes he forgets that they aren’t. 

But something is different today. Ever since Donghyuck showed up at his house that afternoon he had been antsy, restless for hours at a time, looking like he was about to say something and deciding against it in the very last second. He is calm now, leafing through Mark’s bookshelf, but Mark can still feel something tense in the air. 

It comes when Mark is about halfway through his calculus notes and Donghyuck has just closed a book holding photos of baby animals. He lets the book drop to the floor and calls Marks name, so quietly Mark thinks it might have been an accident, not meant to be said out loud. 

“What’s up?” 

“Do you ever think about the future?” 

It is a question. It’s not a weird question, Mark hears it every day from his classmates, teachers, once or twice he even heard it from his parents. Yet the fact that it’s Donghyuck who’s asking him takes the normalcy away from it, not making it weird, just making it something noteworthy. It is a question. 

“I try not to.” He says, and it’s the truth, because what conversations with classmates and teachers and his parents have told him is that the future is scary. “What about you?” 

“I don’t.” Donghyuck says, and it comes out quick, as if he’d been waiting for Mark to ask. “I stopped.”

Donghyuck’s fingers are knotted up complicatedly in his lap and Mark wants to go over and interlace them with his instead, hug Donghyuck and tell him to not worry about whatever he’s thinking about, kiss him and tell him it’s going to be alright. But he know that this is something that needs to be said, a conversation they need to have. 

“You should know that, for me, and for Jeno and Taeyong as well, the future, it’s- It loses all of its meaning. Which might be nice, I guess. You don’t really have to worry about it, you know? You have so much time to do everything you ever want to do… But it’s also kind of sad. You kind of forget how to look at where you’re going, with time. You stop looking forward to things in the long-run.” 

Mark nods. He doesn’t trust his voice to speak. 

“I always used to have my head up in the clouds, dreaming about the future. Me and Yerim filled hundreds of her notebooks with the places we wanted to travel, the things we wanted to see. I saw all of them by now, multiple times.” Donghyuck has a peculiar kind of smile on his face now. “One notebook was entirely dedicated to marriage plans. Yerim went through with most of hers. Her husband was pretty okay, nothing special, but not the worst that could have come out of arranged marriage, I reckon. They had exactly 27 white doves at their wedding, and yellow roses.”

Whenever Donghyuck talks about Yerim he looks like he’s miles away, in a different place. Mark can never tell if it’s a better place or a worse one. He doesn’t think Donghyuck could tell him either, if he asked. 

“Anyways, what I’m saying is, we had a lot of things planned. Sometimes I look at all of these things we dreamed of and I get really fucking sad, because I’ll never get to have them, you know? Marrying someone and settling down and having children, all these mundane things. And I get sad because Yerim had those things, and she was happy, but now she’s-- She’s gone. She’s been gone for a long time, but I still get sad about it.” 

Mark nods again. He really wants to hug him, but it doesn’t seem like Donghyuck is done yet. When he doesn’t say anything for quite a while, Mark dares to ask: “Why are you telling me this?” 

Donghyuck takes a deep breath, buries his hands in the pocket of his hoodie. It’s actually Mark’s hoodie, Donghyuck just never gave it back to him, claiming that it’s the only piece of clothing in the world that can hold off the February cold. 

“Because I want you to understand them. And I want you to know that I’d understand whatever choice you’re going to make. It’s entirely yours to make, with everything in mind I just told you, and you shouldn’t do anything you don’t want to--” 

“Hyuck, what are you talking about?” 

Donghyuck holds his gaze for a second, then drops it and pulls out something from the pocket of his hoodie. It’s a vial, a simple one, the glass kind of dull, but Mark can still see the water inside of it. 

“I want you to know that I’ll be there, no matter what choice you make. If you want me to be.” The small laugh that spills over his lips is watery. “I’m kind of attached, you know?” 

Mark thinks about light shining through foliage, about the song of the water in the distance and the feeling of grass underneath his feet. He thinks about the jars full of tea leaves in Taeyong’s kitchen, about all the naps he’s taken with Jeno’s cats curled up next to him. He thinks about Donghyuck’s laugh, about the way his eyes glint when he’s telling a joke, about how me makes Mark feel like he belongs. Then he thinks about Johnny and Ten and the way they are a home to each other and to Mark. He thinks about Johnny’s hugs and how he never knows the right words, about Ten’s warm smiles and how he sometimes always seems to find the words Johnny needs. He thinks about Jaemin and Renjun, about the detailed 30-point-lifeplan Jaemin had explained to him the other week. He thinks about the portfolio for art school Renjun is putting together, about the small smile on his lips when Mark and Jaemin had loudly proclaimed that they can’t wait to visit his first exhibition. He thinks about the past and the present and the future, all in one short second. 

When he takes the vial from Donghyuck’s hands, he knows that he’s not done thinking, not by a long shot. Maybe he won’t ever be, maybe it will be tomorrow. 

In that moment, all he can say is: “Me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/wannaorbit) for questions or complaints <3


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